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How Alzheimer's evolves; how to protect your cognitive powers

Almost 7 million Americans age 65 and older have Alzheimer's disease (AD) -- and three-quarters of them are 75-plus. But AD doesn't just pop up once you're getting Medicare. It's a slowly developing disease that new studies show produces distinct changes in your brain and body over many years.

In 2020, researchers announced a blood test to spot...Read more

Meds Can Help Identify The Cause Behind Cough With Mucus

Health Advice / Keith Roach /

DEAR DR. ROACH: I am an 103-year-old woman with a medical problem that I hope you can help me with. I cough up a lot of mucus every day, which is clear with no discoloration. The cough can start at anytime, but it is more prevalent at night. The mucus starts with the cough and can last anywhere from 15-30 minutes or more.

I don't know where ...Read more

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Intermittent fasting linked to heart risks in research surprise

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

The safety of intermittent fasting, a popular strategy to lose weight by limiting food intake to certain times, was called into question by a surprise finding from research presented at a medical meeting.

Limiting mealtimes to a period of just eight hours a day was linked to a 91% increase in risk of death from heart disease in the study, ...Read more

White House unveils executive order to boost women's health

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

The Biden administration is rolling out an executive order to strengthen women’s health research standards across federal agencies and prioritize its funding in an effort to close the gap on long-standing disparities.

As part of the order, the National Science Foundation and Department of Health and Human Services are instructed to research ...Read more

Children experience more injuries, stress and even burnout when they specialize in one sport

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

From football to baseball, gymnastics to tennis, more young athletes are becoming sports specialists. They join expensive sports clubs or youth leagues and devote themselves to a single sport all year long. But Nirav Pandya, a professor of orthopedic surgery and sports medicine at the University of California San Francisco, says there are ...Read more

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Montana, an island of abortion access, preps for consequential elections and court decisions

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

A years-long battle over abortion access in a sprawling and sparsely populated region of the U.S. may come to a head this year in the courts and at the ballot box.

Challenges to several state laws designed to chip away at abortion access are pending in Montana courts. Meanwhile, abortion rights advocates are pushing a ballot initiative that ...Read more

Amy Maxmen/KFF Health News/TNS

How the anti-vaccine movement pits parental rights against public health

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Gayle Borne has fostered more than 300 children in Springfield, Tennessee. She’s cared for kids who have rarely seen a doctor — kids so neglected that they cannot speak. Such children are now even more vulnerable because of a law Tennessee passed last year that requires the direct consent of birth parents or legal guardians for every routine...Read more

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Diabetes Quick Fix: Thai peanut and coconut scallops with ginger rice

Health Advice / Health Advice /

Scallops are perfect for a quick meal. They need no preparation and only take a few minutes to cook. For this recipe they are simmered in a flavorful sauce made from a mixture of peanut sauce and coconut milk. Both items can be found in the Asian section of the supermarket.

Basmati rice has a nutty flavor and smells a little like popcorn when ...Read more

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Ask the Pediatrician: Why co-viewing is important

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Most parents I meet these days worry about what their kids do online. After all, it can be hard to know what they're absorbing from their media interactions.

The good news is that online experiences can help kids learn conversation skills, strengthen their decision-making abilities and much more. However, they do need guidance from parents and ...Read more

Get max benefits from exercise -- for both men and women

Do you want to exercise your options for better health? Well, it turns out that women and men have been making quite different choices, according to a new study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Researchers looked at data on leisure-time physical activity for over 400,000 U.S. adults for 22 years. They found that around a ...Read more

Herpes Symptoms Usually Appear Four Days After Exposure

Health Advice / Keith Roach /

DEAR DR. ROACH: I have a question regarding the transmission rate of herpes simplex virus (HSV-1). I had a sexual encounter with exposure to HSV-1. Despite being careful, there was some contact. I explained my fear of contracting HSV-1, and my partner admitted that they had the virus but had been on antiviral medication for years, to the point...Read more

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Fight health misinformation by influencing the influencers

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Public health institutions are facing the challenge of a lifetime as social media breeds misinformation and disinformation about everything from COVID vaccines to climate change. Now, a creative program at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is trying to flip the script by influencing the influencers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Given...Read more

How meth became an epidemic in America, and what’s happening now that it’s faded from the headlines

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Rural America has long suffered from an epidemic of methamphetamine use, which accounts for thousands of drug overdoses and deaths every year.

William Garriott, an anthropologist at Drake University, explored meth’s impact on communities and everyday life in the U.S. in his 2011 book “Policing Methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in ...Read more

Secret contract aims to upend landmark California prison litigation

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California commissioned an exhaustive study of whether its prisons are providing sufficient mental health care, an effort officials said they could use to try to end a 34-year-old federal lawsuit over how the state treats inmates with mental illness.

But corrections officials won’t disclose basic details of the now-...Read more

Keith McDonald/KFF Health News/TNS

A new $16,000 postpartum depression drug is here. How will insurers handle it?

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

A much-awaited treatment for postpartum depression, zuranolone, hit the market in December, promising an accessible and fast-acting medication for a debilitating illness. But most private health insurers have yet to publish criteria for when they will cover it, according to a new analysis of insurance policies.

The lack of guidance could limit ...Read more

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On Nutrition: Ways to prevent colorectal cancer

Health Advice / Nutrition /

We may joke about the prep involved for a colonoscopy (an exam for abnormal changes in the large intestine). But cancers of the colon or rectum are no laughing matter. In fact, when you combine the cancer death rates of men and women, colorectal cancer is now the second deadliest cancer in the United States, according to the American Cancer ...Read more

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Mayo Clinic Minute: Advances in multiple myeloma treatment

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

March is Myeloma Awareness Month. Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that most often occurs in people over age 45. It's the second-most common blood cancer and the most common blood cancer in Black people.

Right now, there is no cure for the disease. But as Dr. Joselle Cook, a Mayo Clinic hematologist, explains, recent advances in treatment are...Read more

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Mayo Clinic Minute: What is hepatitis C?

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

It's estimated that 2 to 3 million people in the U.S. are living with the hepatitis C virus, and hundreds of thousands of them are undiagnosed. That's primarily because it tends to be asymptomatic in the initial stages until liver damage sets in decades later.

A recent study coauthored by Dr. Karthik Gnanapandithan, a hospitalist at Mayo Clinic...Read more

Ten Days Is Sufficient Enough To Stop Isolation After Mild Covid

Health Advice / Keith Roach /

DEAR DR. ROACH: My husband and I both came down with COVID. We had all of the usual symptoms and have since recovered. We have been in isolation and are even wearing masks around the house to keep our (so far) uninfected son safe. However, after 15 days for me and 17 days for my husband, we are still testing positive. We have used four ...Read more

When it's sugar vs. exercise, sugar wins and you lose

Sugar-sweetened beverages are the single largest source of added sugars in American diets. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 63% of adults drink sugar-sweetened beverages once a day or more. And Harvard's T. H. Chan School of Public Health reports that 5% of U.S. adults drink the equivalent of four cans of soda daily. ...Read more